So She Can Move On
by BonesBird
Summary: After the events of "Extreme Risk", B'Elanna needs to convince her friends, and her Captain, that she is fit to return to duty. J/T and K/T friendship. P/T despite the tag.


**Title: So She Can Move On  
Summary: After the events of "Extreme Risk", B'Elanna needs to convince her friends, and her Captain, that she is fit to return to duty.**

**So, what feels like forever, but was probably only a week or so, ago - Alpha Flyer sent me a review that sparked a challenge to myself. She and I discussed some "guidelines" for a oneshot that would push me out of my 200-1000 word comfort zone, and we set a target of 4000-5000 words with NO lyrics. **

**I managed it, barely, and this piece came from it. It is set maybe a week after "Extreme Risk" and is P/T despite the tag. It also has connections to my story "All Is Lost, Hope Remains" which is B'Elanna's time on Terok Nor and Bajor. As always, read and review!**

* * *

The morning dawned with its typical grace. The alarm set for Tom woke her as well, especially when he managed to roll out of the bed and onto the floor in his attempts to disengage himself from the duvet they slept under. She laughed as he fought with the cover that was still wrapped around his legs. Once he was finally out he threw them on the bed towards her, and his grumbles followed him through to the bathroom. She listened to him, letting his soft complaints lull her back to sleep, needing the extra few hours.

Lately, Tom had been keeping her up late, listening to her tell stories about her time with the Maquis, her friends, and everything else. He didn't ask anything, and for the first time she knew she had found a partner who wouldn't judge her for all the skeletons in her closet. The feeling was foreign and unfamiliar, but all her problems had begun with her fear of opening up. The decision to change that had been somewhat forced out of her, but now she knew Chakotay had been right to force her into it.

"Lieutenant Torres the time is oh-six-hundred hours" came the unexpected call from the computer. She bolted upright from her semi-asleep state and looked round, finding Tom pulling his uniform on, she looked up to him and shook her head, confused.

"Wait, did I set an alarm today?" She asked him, unable to remember, and knowing he'd remember better than she would.

"You did, you have that meeting with the Captain" He gave her an unreadable expression as she wrapped her arms around her knees again.

"The Captain" she sighed, knowing that the day was not going to be one of the easiest of her life, she knew she had let the captain down. Janeway had promoted her to chief over several better qualified candidates, because her skills were unrivalled, but Janeway had had her reservations, and although she had served for more than 4 years with distinction, this threatened to derail everything.

"Just go to the meeting" Tom said, as if he could read her mind. Knowing what she would be thinking. He knew her better than she knew herself at times, so it never came as a surprise when he knew what she was thinking. He took her hands and smiled at her, even as she complained.

"But I don't want too, I just want to get back to work"

"You know that Doc and the Captain won't let you do that until they've spoken to you" always the voice of reason, Tom Paris was, and she was suddenly torn between her ire at the situation and a desire to laugh at his statement, and she wasn't entirely certain why.

"It's been a week" She eventually settled on, knowing how petulant she sounded, like a child who had been caught doing something she wasn't allowed too.

"And you were hurting yourself for months. B'Elanna, just go, you'll be back on duty soon" Tom stated in his slow, calm voice. Totally at odds with the persona he displayed to most of the crew. This softer side of him was something only she saw, and it made her love him more.

"I'll see you tonight?" She asked a few moments later, smiling as she pulled a clean uniform out of the unit she kept them in, finding one of his on top of hers, she looked up and put it on the bed, watching him grin and shrug before he replied.

"Harry and I have a hoverball match with the Delany sisters, come watch?" He was still grinning as he picked up his uniform from where she'd put it on the bed and folding it into his side of her bed, she remembered he'd told her about the match earlier, it was the ship finals, and he wanted her there in support.

"I'll do just that" she nodded as he leant over and kissed her as hard as he could, then pulled back with a smile.

"I'm due on the bridge. See you at the match" He kissed her again and headed out of the door.

She focused on getting ready, preparing what she was going to say to the captain to convince her to let her back on the duty roster. It would take a lot to convince her that she wasn't going to just fly off again. Now that she had been forced to face up to what she'd done, she didn't feel the need to go back to the holodeck. She hadn't been alone much, spending her time in the mess hall, or going for the check-ups the doctor had demanded almost daily.

When the time came for her to meet with the captain, she wandered up slowly, nodding to Chakotay as she stepped onto the Bridge, she felt Tom's eyes on her, and turned back to him. She shot him a small smile, and felt her heart stop a little with the supportive smile he sent back. He knew she hadn't been looking forward to this part of her treatment, but she needed to get back to work. She hit the contact on the door, and within seconds she heard the call, and she took a deep breath before stepping over that threshold.

"Come in, I'm glad you came" the Captain smiled as she looked up and saw B'Elanna, she motioned to the long sofa under her viewport, "Can I get you a drink"

"No thanks," she took the offered seat, sitting slightly uncomfortably on the bench seat. "This is the only way I can get back to work"

"It's not that simple, B'Elanna" Janeway looked at her, a slight grimace covering her face as she did. B'Elanna knew what was coming, she knew what Janeway was going to say, and she wasn't going to stand for any of it. She didn't need more time to recover. She needed to get back to work as quickly as she could, to get back to some semblance of normality in her life.

"Captain" She started, ready to make Janeway see that if she needed too, but the captain cut her off with one raised hand. It spoke volumes about how much she respected her captain that that one little gesture could silence her, when normally she wouldn't dream of stopping when she was in what Tom affectionately called 'rant mode'.

"I know, you spoke to Chakotay, but he's not your captain, or your doctor, and to send you back I need to understand your state of mind" Janeway stated, and B'Elanna understood instantly why Janeway wanted to see her, and it wasn't for the reasons she'd thought. Still, she wasn't appreciative of the subterfuge and conflicting ideas she was getting from the Captain and the Doctor.

"There is no problem with my state of mind, not when it comes to my work. That is the one thing I have always been certain of, that I've never had to worry about, because I know how this ship works, I know how to make her better, heal her wounds, keep her healthy." She tried to explain. Hoping that the captain would understand why she wanted to go back to work, and why Voyager needed her chief in the engine room where she belonged. It wasn't even just that B'Elanna felt like she belonged there, it was also the place where she felt most at home on the entire ship. If she needed to heal, she'd do it there, nowhere else. B'Elanna looked up into Janeway's eyes and she could see that the older woman was searching for something, an answer that B'Elanna wasn't certain she even knew. Let alone could give to her captain. After a few more seconds of scrutiny, Janeway opened her mouth, then closed it again, looking for a second like she was lost for words. B'Elanna took the moment to press her point "I can do what I need there"

"You have control in Engineering?" Janeway prodded, finding her voice and looking at B'Elanna with a frank stare. She suddenly wished she had accepted the offer of a drink, needing to busy her hands with something. She felt like the captain could see inside her mind, and that wasn't the best place to be, not when you were still fighting the demons caused by her depression.

"In a sense, yes, I do. I know why Voyager does something, and if it goes wrong, I know how to fix it." She said, slowly weighing up the question and thinking about the answer, she wasn't sure if Janeway was acted as a friend or a senior officer, and in either case she still didn't want to divulge everything. It wasn't that she didn't trust the Captain, or believe she would respect B'Elanna's wishes, but she just wasn't ready. It had taken time for her to trust Tom with this, and they had a far more personal connection than she had with anyone else on the crew. Then she realised it was time to be honest, to just let the emotions out, maybe it would help her feel better, she didn't know for sure. "I" B'Elanna stopped and thought, her mind completely blanking on her for a moment as she relived the last few months. From learning about the Maquis, to the event that triggered her need for release. After the Hirogen took the ship, and used the holodecks, she was injured in the last battle, and she relished the pain, so she had tried to continue it. She enjoyed feeling something so strongly that she forgot everything else for a while. "I wasn't sure, how to cope. I don't know how much you know about my past, about my upbringing, or about what happened after the Academy"

"I know you joined the Maquis" Janeway sat back and watched her, taking a sip of her coffee, for the first time since the meeting had begun, B'Elanna felt like she had the Captain's entire attention, and that it wasn't shared amongst the numerous other duties the captain had going around her head at any one time. This story would require the Captains' full attention, and she wasn't ready to share it if Janeway wasn't listening.

"That was almost two years after I left the Academy." She said, knowing in that moment that word had never reached Starfleet of what had happened in that time. She was as glad of that one favour that the medics on Europa Nova had done as she was of any in her life.

"What did you do in the intervening years?"

"I spent 6 months in the Bajoran system, then I spent my time finding any way to pay my debts from that as I could" She shook her head, remembering the way she had come to be found by Chakotay

"What were you doing on Bajor?" Janeway asked, and it was clear from her expression she was genuinely interested in hearing what had led B'Elanna to one of the most dangerous planets in the Alpha Quadrant.

"I never said specifically I was on Bajor, I was for 4 months, I was on their station, Terok Nor, for the first couple of months of my stay." She shook her head, remembering the smell of the ore processing centre, the haggard looks on all those around her. It took Janeway's next question to break her out of the reverie, and while she no longer dwelled on it, she could hear the sounds in her mind for a few minutes longer

"What were you doing in the system?"

"Being a prisoner, mostly. I was on a cargo ship, and was accused of helping the resistance, the prefect didn't take too kindly to me defying his wishes, and I spent the last 4 months in a labour camp, Batal." B'Elanna noticed the subtle change in Janeway's body language. She understood her angry engineer just a little more with that statement, but B'Elanna wasn't sure if she was happy about that fact or not. "The camp was liberated about a month before the withdrawal, the resistance managed to get me out of the system and back to neutral space, but I didn't stay there long. I got a job on a transport, then stowed away onto Chakotay's ship. You know the story from there."

"None of that was in your file" B'Elanna avoided her eyes, not wanting to see the emotion that she could hear in Janeway's voice.

"Because hardly anybody knew it. The members of the cell who helped me leave Bajor, a few members of the Maquis who'd been at Batal. Even Chakotay doesn't know."

"Does Tom know?" she asked, calmly and quietly, eliciting a smile from the engineer. B'Elanna thought back over Tom's reaction, his anger at her treatment, his sorrow that she'd had to experience that so young.

"Yes, in far more detail than you. I was only 19 at the time"

"How did he take it?"

"He understood me a little more, I think. I remember that in the Maquis nobody cared why you joined as long as you did what was needed. But when I first joined Voyager, I heard people asking why I joined. Kessik IV wasn't in the DMZ, the Klingon's weren't involved at all." She shrugged, she'd never cared abut the rumours then, she definitely didn't care now, but she was telling her captain something so private, something she'd buried so low in her memory that she rarely accessed it, rarely thought about it. It was something that was shared between close friends. She looked to the door and Chakotay entered her mind. He didn't even know about her history in the camps, on the planet, and she hadn't exactly volunteered the information. "I know Chakotay knew I had a history with the Cardassian's, but not the exact details." She sighed, reliving the horrors she'd seen on Bajor was not how she thought she'd spend the morning. "When that happened, I'd thought that I'd never have a family again. Then I was accepted by the Maquis, and I was closer to most of them than I ever had been to my family. I always thought they'd be there. When we got home, they'd be waiting for us to re-join the fight. Losing them was worse than losing my father when I was a child. This time I had chosen to trust and love, and they were ripped from me. So it was easier to be numb than to feel the pain." She felt the pain of losing them all over again, like a Dk'tagh to the heart the pain stabbed her, but instead of burying it she embraced it, and thought of her friends that were storming the fields of Sto'Vo'Kor.

"Then, why did you start going to the holodeck?" Janeway brought her crashing back to reality, and B'Elanna thought, really thought about everything that had gone on in the last year, everything that had led to this point in time, and she felt ashamed all over again that she had harmed the people she loved.

"When the Hirogen took us, I got injured, and it hurt, it was painful, and I felt that. The pain was better than feeling nothing." She answered honestly. Pain was at least something to feel while she was running and hiding from the emotions she refused to acknowledge then.

"So you kept doing it?" Janeway asked in that quiet tone she adopted when she knew it was hard for someone.

"Yeah" B'Elanna almost whispered, her head dropping to her chest and her eyes closing. Lying hadn't worked, and now,

"What do you do now?"

"Oh, Tom makes me talk. We've been having a lot of late nights, him listening to me talk. He makes sure I don't bottle anything up. I've also spent time with Chakotay and Mike. Mike doesn't even know if his family made it." She smiled for a moment, thinking of the two little boys she'd seen the week before they left. "They were such cute boys. There was always the chance they were sent to Bajor. When there were threats, the Maquis sent non-combatants there. They were sympathetic, and would harbour them." B'Elanna remembered the promise she'd made to one of the resistance members, that she'd go and see Bajor when it was free, she hadn't had the chance, maybe one day she'd go back and visit, if the planet was still there when they got back.

"That's good of them, wasn't the station under Starfleet then?"

"Please, we never sent them to the station. They went straight to Ashalla, that's the capital" she almost laughed at the idea of sending Maquis members and children to a Starfleet station, that would have been the last place they'd send them, even though Bajor would have taken them all on a political asylum if Starfleet had tried.

"So, there is a chance a few survived?"

"Mostly children, a few pregnant women no doubt, not many." She shook her head, trying not too think about the people she'd lost.

"So you still lost a lot of friends, are the Maquis here taking this loss ok?"

"No, Mike, Chakotay and I were the seniors on our ship, you already knew that through Tuvok though. The three of us are still trying to be the leaders with our grief, while Chakotay is better at hiding his feelings, Mike and I are struggling, and I think, us all talking together is helping, not just me but the others."

Silence fell again, and this time B'Elanna didn't feel the need to fill the silence. She'd told her story. "Do you really think you're ready to go back to work" Janeway asked, after a few moments of study, as if she was trying to decide if B'Elanna was losing her mind or not.

"If I don't, on Tom's next day off you may have murdered helmsman" she joked, hoping that the Captain would understand that her engineer was feeling restless.

"I'll take that as a 'yes captain' correct?"

"Yes captain" B'Elanna nodded, smiling and trying not to think what would be said next.

"I'll talk to the doctor. If he agrees, and I'm sure he will, we'll get you back on the roster."

"Thank you" she smiled, standing up and taking a few steps away from the bench, assuming their meeting was done, she had nothing left to say, and the Captain had clearly decided she wasn't losing her mind.

"And B'Elanna…" Janeway called as she reached the bottom of the steps, barely out of the sensor range for the door. She stopped and turned back, hoping that she wasn't going to be told off again.

"Yes captain?"

"If you ever need to talk about any of this, you know where I am" Janeway smiled, sipping her coffee again, looking at B'Elanna over the rim of her mug.

"Thank you, Captain" She replied, genuinely touched by the small gesture of friendship that her captain had shown her.

"Dismissed" Janeway ordered, and she'd never been as torn about leaving the Captain as she was in that moment.

* * *

The holodeck was already half full of the crew who were coming to watch the annual final. It was the first time Tom and Harry had made it all the way to the top match, but as always, the Delany sisters' with the favourites to win. "Hey Maquis, feeling better?" Harry called, spotting her the moment she walked into the room, giving her his trademark smile and pointing to the bench.

"I'm here aren't I?" she took the seat and smiled at her friend, the friend she had sadly ignored through all of her problems, it was one of her biggest regrets about it.

"I've been pretty worried about you." He smiled, his worry showing through the light air he tried to put on. He grasped her hand and shook it lightly, giving her the support that he could. The fact he was so concerned for her caused her to feel another stab of guilt, she made a vow to herself that she would never forget him again, he was older than her, but he seemed so much younger.

"I'm fine Harry, dinner tomorrow and we'll talk about it, Tom's got sickbay duty" she smiled as he nodded and chuckled.

"Oh, Tom'll love that"

"Yeah, I'm not looking forward to him coming home after an evening shift with the doc" she grinned and shook her head, imagining the fun she was going to have the next night, Tom was never in the best mood after a day with the doc, an evening when he knew his girlfriend and his best friend were having dinner without him may just tip him a little over the edge.

"Are you two living together now?" Harry asked, and for an instant she wondered if Harry would be annoyed if they were, it had always been the three of them at dinners, talking together, working on projects together, but since she and Tom had become a couple, Harry had been largely pushed to the side. "Forget I asked. Are you staying for the match?" he said a few seconds later, before she'd had chance to formulate a response. She just squeezed his hand back and smiled.

"Yeah, Jenny and Megan are easily going to win this!" She teased lightly, laughing at the blush that rose up his cheeks even as he struggled to find a defence.

"Hey, Tom's better at this than he gives himself credit for, you and Susan should enter next year. You're both good" She and Susan regularly played together when they weren't on duty, but Susan was her third in charge in Engineering, and as such, she was almost as busy as B'Elanna herself. Though B'Elanna was sure she and Susan would be able to give the Delaney's a run for their money, timing matches would be almost impossible.

"We don't have the time Harry, good luck" she smiled as Tom headed towards them out of the changing rooms, while more members of the crew filtered into the stands around the holographic court. Harry looked around and spotted the reason for her sudden dismissal. He clapped her on the shoulder then stood up, going and talking to the Delaney's while Tom walked to her, before she'd said anything he opened his mouth.

"How did it go?" he reached for her hand, gripping it as tightly as he could. She smiled at his concern, wondering how much of that was about his own welfare, he knew he would be the target of her annoyance were she off duty much longer.

"Fine, I told her everything, we talked" she hoped the news would put him at ease, and he wouldn't have to worry about her going in to the game. While she enjoyed teasing Harry, she really hoped that they won, because for three years the Delany sisters' had, and it was getting monotonous.

"Everything?" Tom asked, his concern shining through. He knew how she'd wanted to keep her past where it belonged, in her past. She stroked his cheek and smiled.

"Everything. All of it. So she would understand"

"And she put you back on duty?" He asked, looking over to where Harry, Jenny and Megan were, checking they were still busy checking equipment.

"From Friday."

"That's good news" He grinned and pulled her to him. Wrapping his arms around her and kissing her neck in the way he always did.

"Tom! Hurry up. We're all ready to go!" Megan shouted and they broke apart, he held a finger up and turned back to her, the grin on his face restored to its rightful place.

"I'd best go play, wish me luck"

She leant forward and kissed him lightly, and as she pulled away she was rewarded with a smile, "Qapla'" she grinned, turning and climbing into a front row seat. Glad, for once, that her crewmates knew how to make things OK.


End file.
